Secret Worlds (110 page)

Skye’s eyes flickered; she’d seen something all right.

“You can tell me.” Kheelan hoped his voice was encouraging. “Aren’t you curious? Maybe together we can figure this out.”

She let out a sigh. “I don’t know who or what I’ve seen, but there’s something down there, in the basement storeroom. Whatever they are – they’re in big trouble.”

Kheelan’s breath caught. His instincts were right. The Green Fairy was the headquarters for some kind of Dark Fae operation. “Tell me.”

Skye stared him down. “No. You tell me how you knew something was going on at the store, and why it matters to you.”

Kheelan ran his hand through his hair, frustrated. She wasn’t so timid after all. Time for Plan B. He dug in his pocket, pulled out a stone, and laid it on the table. Skye picked up the gray, smooth rock and ran her finger over the hole at its center, formed from years of running water.

“A hagstone.” She smiled, cupping her hand around its polished surface.

“You know what it can do?”

“People used to believe if you held it up to a full moon and looked through a hagstone’s opening, you could make a wish and it would come true.”

What a bunch of crap. He’d tried it once, and he was still nothing but a changeling.

“It’s a bunch of crap,” she said.

Kheelan started when Skye said what he’d been thinking. “I take it you’ve actually tried it too.”

She placed the stone on the table with a bang. “Don’t tell me this one’s special and it really works. Even if it worked for you, nothing comes true for me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You know, it has another purpose.”

Skye’s brow creased. “I’ve never heard anything else.”

“Would you believe me if I said you could see fairies with it?”

Skye opened her mouth and then closed it.

“Take it outside any night; it doesn’t have to be a full moon. You’ll have better luck though if the moon is visible. Find an oak tree, they have some kind of special connection with fairies, or even better, find an oak tree with mushrooms growing underneath. Look through the hagstone and you’ll see the fairies. Guaranteed.”

If Skye saw them with her own eyes, she might be more receptive to helping him in his quest for freedom. With this stone, this method, Skye would only be able to see the cute forest pixies so immortalized in children’s fairy tales. She would want to align herself with the Seelie Court Fae, the good guys . . . in a manner of speaking.

She smiled a small upturn of the lips that had nothing to do with the rueful look in her eyes. “You don’t know who you’re talking to. If there is a way to mess it up, I’ll find it. That’s my special talent.”

Her confession surprised him. Again, he questioned if she was the special Halfling of legend. She certainly didn’t sound or act like someone with any special gifts. His faith wavered, then returned. He’d seen the crystal rainbows glowing around her at the shop.

“I have faith in you.” To his surprise, he meant it.

I have faith in you.
Kheelan’s words echoed in Skye’s mind as she stood alone in a grove of oak trees, the Mustang’s headlights providing a dim luminescence in the silver fog. The rain had subsided to a fine mist but her shoes squished through several inches of mud. If she saw nothing after making such a freaking mess, she would be totally pissed. She took a few steps further on the road bank, looking for mushrooms. No luck. The moon was also invisible from the storm cloud covering. Not the ideal conditions, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if she didn’t give this a shot.

Skye took a last glance at the road behind. Not a car in sight. She must be a naïve idiot agreeing to meet a stranger alone, and then go into the woods by herself after he took off who knows where. Best to get this over with, another failure to notch in her belt.

“Here goes nothing,” she said aloud. Skye lifted the hagstone to her eyes. Despite her own low expectations, she couldn’t help the foolish disappointment when she saw nothing. She pictured Kheelan’s intense brown eyes, urging her on. “Screw you,” she said to his image. She lifted a muddy shoe out of the muck to turn around, then stopped at a faint rustling.

It could have been leaves, falling acorns or branches swaying but the echo had a melodic
ting
. She held the stone back up to an eye.

In the misty fog, balls of murky lights with halo rings danced in the darkness. Her hand shook and she was afraid to move, not wanting the strange light spheres to disappear. Gradually, the lights crystallized and focused until Skye could make out four to six inch humanoid creatures with wings.

It was true! She hardly dared breath as they fluttered around at such speed she couldn’t actually call it flying. One moment they would be dancing on a wet oak leaf, then reappear in a flash on another tree branch. She clamped her free hand over her mouth to keep from laughing in delight; sure they would instantly take off.

Could this be a hoax of some kind? Skye put the hagstone in the palm of her hand and studied it. Nothing unusual about it, no way it could be trick. This was magic as she’d never seen it. Sure, she’d been raised in a coven, but this . . . she held the stone up again. The fairies – what else could they be? - were still there, and a hundred more had joined them in a kind of rain dance celebration. Skye could barely make out the smiles and hear faint echoes of laughter as they skated on raindrops and shook the leaves to drink and bathe.

She had no idea how long she stood there, and not once did any of them look her way. Perhaps she was as invisible to them as they ordinarily were to her. A car engine in the distance finally woke Skye from her dreamy trance. It wasn’t safe to be out alone like this at night. She went back to the Mustang and turned the key. The dashboard clock read two a.m., yet it seemed only minutes had passed instead of hours. Her body trembled, a combination of physical discomfort and mental unease.

She gripped the stone in her palm. She had the power to see them again, as much as she liked. Skye again pictured Kheelan’s face at the restaurant, the intensity radiating from those gold-flecked eyes, his determined jaw and the strange tattoo on his hand. How was he connected to the fairies? How had he known there were fairies in the shop? She was convinced now that those voices in the storeroom were trapped fairies.

And the even bigger question- was Kheelan there to help them or to hurt them?

Kheelan stole the key from the drunken, snoring Finvorra and opened the book.

From the
Perpetual Annals of the Daoine-sith, Book of Records
…Kheelan scanned the index:
Royal Court of the Seelie, Tribes and Chieftains of the Unseelie, Sidhe Shapeshifters, Pixies, Merfolk, Gnomes, Elves, Brownies, Fae animals, MacLeods of Dunvegan and other Half-Fae, Tacharan.

Tacharan, aka Changelings
, his heart pounded, remembering the cruel fairy taunts of his childhood. Despite his eagerness to read, Kheelan noted that his kind was listed even below the fairy animal classification. The arrogance.

He read on.

Changelings: Human children normally borrowed
(hah! the little liars, they were stolen)
at birth or up until age four, placed into
service as deemed appropriate for the purpose of essential tasks related to either manual labor
, (slavery was more like it)
collection of information in tribal feuds
(spy work),
procreation
(replenish the gene pool)
, or any other use to ensure the prosperity and perpetuation of the Daoine-sith
.

He skimmed over much of what he already knew – switching of humans with rejected fairy children determined to be strange or marked in some way . . . practice began only after the first thousand years of recorded Fae history . . . escaping detection during the borrowing or switching . . . enchantment spells to bind humans . . . role of The Guardians . . . At last he came to an alphabetized listing of human children by birth year.

Kheelan stole a cautious glance at Finvorra and raked him over from head to toe in disgust. His hair lay in greasy clumps, drool ran down a corner of his chin, his tee shirt sported spaghetti stains, he sported grayish boxer briefs, and had long hairy legs that attached to tiny feet with twisted, malformed toes.

Kheelan went back to the book. He knew his real date of birth, he’d overheard a former guardian, Oonagh, discuss it with her Fae companions late one evening when they presumed him asleep.

There it was.

November 22, 1989, 7:59 P.M., Kyle Jeffries, born to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Jeffries, Northport, Alabama. Swapped at three years of age by Spriggans, Unseelie Court, and replaced by similar-aged Fae child, for failure to shimmer and adapt to elemental forces. Human purchased from Spriggans. Transaction completed with no difficulties: human family, changeling and Fae child thriving and unsuspecting at last census report, January 2012.

Kheelan’s chest constricted and his heart hammered so loud he was sure Finvorra had to hear, although another quick glance showed he had not. Kheelan gripped the book as if to choke the life out of it. The lies. This lie was the one to end all lies. He shut his eyes and heard the voice of Annwynn, one of his earliest, and kindest, guardians when he asked her pointed questions.

“Why am I so different? Why do I have this ugly, large body? All the other kids make fun of me.”

“Don’t ye worry about it poppet,” her voice was smooth as water over rock. “You were chosen to live with our glorious race and it is your duty and pleasure to serve us. If you had stayed with your
human
—she shuddered delicately at the word—parents, you would not even be alive. They died in a car accident mere days after we, in our kind mercy and foreknowledge, brought you here to live in our world.”

All these years. All these lonely, backbreaking, outcast years his real parents were out there, alive, and they didn’t have a clue their biological child had been stolen.

“I’ll find you,” he whispered. “When all this is over, when I’m truly free, I’ll find you.”

But now was a time for planning escape. Kheelan located the
Book of Fairy Lore
he’d skimmed earlier. The myth of The One, the Halfling, was somewhere in the thick tome. He’d only started looking through this book a few weeks ago. When he first discovered it, the words would shimmer and disappear from the page when he tried to read it. On a hunch, he had produced one of his hagstones and discovered that by peering through the center hole, the words would float on the luminescent lavender pages, one line at a time, completely legible.

He cracked open the book, his muscles straining as the book resisted his efforts. The scent of damp earth and bluebells floated up from the text. Even with the hagstone, reading was difficult. The ancient words were penned with ink from plant dyes, now so faded that some pages were entirely undecipherable. Not only that, the fairies used ornate calligraphy and covered every margin with paintings of curling vines and flowers. The manuscript’s pages were iridescent from flakes of crushed gemstones and abalone shell.

Pretty, but not user-friendly, at least for human eyes.

Kheelan scanned quickly, looking for any reference to the legend.
Always and Future Lore and Legends of the Sidhe . . . beginnings, cast from heaven, breeds resulting: elemental sprites, air spirits, ocean fae . . .tribal formations . . . kings, queens and descendants . . . emergence of gremlins in the technological age . . . shape-shifting into human form . . . human encounters . . . Samhain wars…
There!
Legend of the Halfling Female at Samhain.

Procreation with humans, necessary for repopulation because of continuing war casualties between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, has been met with often disappointing results. Most of the resulting progeny (with the notable exception of the MacLeods of Scotland) are not aware of their true birthright and power. The first of this mixed breed to be acknowledged as Fae-worthy was foretold by Nostriamela, in 1675. Her Talent of Future Predications is well documented.

In her words: “a descendent of a Fae and a human witch shall sprout her wings in the Samhain of her nineteenth year when her latent powers awaken. She is The One, the only one, able to touch the celestial crystal and bring it life. She will be brought into the sacred Faery Realm where she will place her hands upon it. An explosion of light shall burst forth and glow. By this, all will know the Seelie Court possesses the true relic of our former existence and all manner of the Unseelie (trolls, spriggans, phouka, etc.) shall quake before this relic from The Time Above. Knowing the Seelie Court has awakened its power, the Dark Fae will comprehend they cannot prevail against the Good Fae. Eventually, they will have to concede defeat in their race for dominion over Humans.”

Nostriamela’s details are sketchy, as is the nature of all future seeings, and the future shifts and changes with every path chosen in the astral and earthly plane. But she was firm that this opportunity stands for one night, the night of Samhain when all is possible and the veil is thinnest between humans and Fae. Once the sun comes over the horizon of the Halfling’s eighteenth Samhain, the power will disappear with her. The celestial crystal may never have another opportunity to be activated and the Dark Fae will slowly increase in number and strength. It may only take a few centuries thereafter for them to reign over the Seelie Court. Once that happens, humans will be the next race they target for dominion, beginning with witches who have a small measure of effect on matter and energy.

The One will be recognizable by her flaming red hair and unique rainbow aura. As rare as the rainbow aura occurs, there is also a true test to determine The One. She will be able to interpret the ancient pixie fairy language, a feat no other can perform.

Kheelan closed the book. With cunning borne from years of necessity, he carefully returned all the books to the desk drawer and turned the key, making no sound. He stood to put the key back in Finvorra’s pants pockets and ran into a solid mass.

“Give me the key,” Finvorra demanded in a hard voice.